As his trial in federal court approaches, Buddy Cianci remains on his toes, always on the move.
BY MIKE STANTON
Journal Staff Writer
The mayor was talking about opera, but he might as well have been discussing his own life.
Standing beside two divas in the mayor's office, Vincent A. "Buddy" Cianci Jr. rhapsodized about the pomp and splendor, passions and rivalries that infuse opera.
"This is a city filled with opera lovers," the mayor proclaimed. He paused a beat, glanced around his ornate office, and added, "In fact, we do an opera or two here every afternoon."
Unmentioned was the civic opera set to open in the federal courthouse at the other end of Kennedy Plaza in 10 days: not Madame Butterfly or Tosca, but Operation Plunder Dome.
In the audience for the mayor's performance last Tuesday was Robert DeRobbio, treasurer of the newly minted Opera Providence troupe. DeRobbio, in his working life, is a Providence school official -- and a potential government witness regarding alleged payoffs to the mayor for a $1.2-million School Department lease.
"It's funny," DeRobbio said. "I was looking out the window as the mayor was talking, thinking about the trial."
As Cianci faces the third act in his storied political career -- a 30-count racketeering case that could bring the curtain down on his reign as the longest-serving mayor in America -- everybody is thinking about his trial.
Even comedian Robin Williams has Buddy on his mind. Near the beginning of his one-man show at the Providence Performing Arts Center on Thursday night, Williams received a huge laugh when he asked, "Where's the mayor? He's in jail? My [expletive] luck. I think he's off doing Sopranos On Ice."
ACTUALLY, THE MAYOR was wrapping up a union negotiation before heading off to another evening of appearances. Cianci has not slowed his public pace; in fact, he says, he has increased his already hectic schedule. He hurries about his city, attending innumerable news conferences, meetings, events, fundraisers, ribbon-cuttings, groundbreakings, art openings, weddings and wakes, like a man racing against time.
Then, there is the unexpected and the spontaneous. Last week, Cianci rushed to Rhode Island Hospital after the power went out. He squeezed in an interview with a reporter for The Chicago Tribune, who is working on a story about the mayor's perils. And he mediated a labor dispute at the Biltmore Hotel, where he has been ensconced in the Presidential Suite for the past year and a half.
"You know I live there now," he tells a crowd at a neighborhood ceremony in the North End on Wednesday, apologizing for his habitual tardiness. "So it's important they don't go on strike, or I'll be living in a tent."
As he speaks, cars and trucks rumble past. Horns honk, followed by shouts of "Buddeeeee!"
The late Tip O'Neill said that all politics is local. In Buddy Cianci's Providence, all politics is personal. In a place where politics is all about showing up, the mayor is ubiquitous. Buddy sightings filter in from every precinct -- the North End, the South Side, the East Side, the West End, Federal Hill, Smith Hill.
The mayor has also shown up in recent weeks everywhere from Liza Minnelli's star-studded wedding in New York to a dive in South Providence, where he was shooting pool late one night. Another evening, he table-hopped at the Old Canteen on Federal Hill, showing off an artist's rendering of a new label for his marinara sauce as people bought him drinks.
ON APRIL 17, Cianci is due in federal court for the beginning of jury selection for a trial that could go on for two months or more. At that point, his schedule will inevitably slow -- but not stop, he says. Cianci vows to work more nights and weekends, and has even considered having some aides work the second shift, 3 p.m. to 10 p.m.
The trial is set to run from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and 2 p.m. to 4:30 p.m., with no sessions after 1 p.m. on Fridays.
"I can do events until quarter of ten in the mornings, then at lunchtime, then after 4:30 in the afternoon," says Cianci. "This [indictment] hasn't changed my style."
Political and legal observers say that the mayor's whirlwind schedule, whether intended to or not, can woo potential jurors by portraying Cianci as the indispensable maestro who has overseen what he calls the city's renaissance.
"A garage door opens in Silver Lake and Buddy will be there to take credit," says City Councilman Luis A. Aponte, D-Ward 10. "He wants to remind people of what he's done, that he's the steward of the renaissance. The implication is, 'Where would Providence be without Buddy?' and, 'If Buddy's gone, what will happen to Providence?' "
The irony, of course, is that once the trial starts, Cianci will be competing with himself for headlines -- the good news of the Renaissance dueling with the sordid details of his alleged corrupt dealings at City Hall.
Daniel Small, a former federal prosecutor in Boston who defended former Louisiana Gov. Edwin Edwards against corruption charges last year, said that it is to Cianci's advantage to remain visible.
"The last thing a public official under indictment wants to do is look like he's in hiding, or to project a negative image that might filter down to potential jurors," Small says. "He needs to do anything he can do to promote a positive image, to be out there, to be seen, to be perceived as moving forward. You never know what's going to make a difference, whether it has some influence on the judge or the potential jurors or public sentiment. There are so many ways that it can have a favorable effect."
Cianci says that he is simply doing what he has always done. Speaking as he sat at his desk on Tuesday, perusing notes for a luncheon speech, he noted that it was the one-year anniversary of his indictment for racketeering, conspiracy, extortion and witness tampering. The charges were followed by calls from some, most notably Governor Almond, for Cianci to step down rather than remain as a distraction to city affairs.
"My indictment was a year ago today, and I'm still here. I haven't slowed down at all," Cianci said. "I'll do what I have to do to get over this. I've handled crises before."
LAST WEEK he averaged seven meetings or events a day -- not counting unscripted moments, like the Rhode Island Hospital blackout, or late-night outings for a mayor who is, after all, nocturnal.
Cianci, who frequently wears makeup for the television lights, has appeared more tanned lately. His toupees in recent months have taken on a more distinguished silvery-gray.
On a sunny, wind-blown Monday afternoon, his polished black limousine glides up Comstock Avenue, a once-blighted street in South Providence, now gleaming with freshly painted, rehabilitated lead-free houses.
Cianci bounds out of the car, the strong scent of his cologne floating on the breeze. Dignitaries assembled to recognize the completion of the Harvard/Comstock Apartments project include U.S. Sen. Jack Reed, Atty. Gen. Sheldon Whitehouse and mayoral candidate David Cicilline.
Also there is Thomas Deller, a former city planning official, now with the state housing agency, who is expected to testify regarding two of the bribery counts against Cianci. The next day, in the mayor's office, Cianci would swear in Deller as a member of the City Charter Commission.
The mayor tells his photographer to take his picture with Cicilline, and the two men smile. Cianci seeks out Cicilline and has their picture taken whenever their paths cross, which is often. One time, he even allowed his challenger to pin a Cicilline for Mayor button on his lapel. It wasn't there for long.
In his remarks, Cianci jokes about how he fired the developer of the housing, Joseph Caffey, from a city planning job back in 1991, when he resumed office.
Caffey, who had supported Fred Lippitt, one of Cianci's opponents, said that he received his pink slip on the second day Cianci was back in office. Today, he is a Cianci supporter, unfazed by the Plunder Dome allegations hanging over the mayor.
"Buddy Cianci is one of the smartest guys I've ever met," Caffey said in an interview. "He has the ability to focus in on things, even with his unfortunate troubles. He's never lost his vision for the city. Would you come to a ribbon-cutting two weeks before you were going to go on trial?
"If you look in the dictionary for the definition of politician, you'll see a picture of Buddy Cianci."
In coping with adversity, Cianci is following the Bill Clinton playbook, rather than the Richard Nixon model, says Brown University political scientist Darrell West. Instead of hunkering down, as Nixon did during Watergate, Cianci is projecting an image of a man focused on doing the people's work, as Clinton did during his impeachment crisis.
"The prosecution has to worry that the jury pool comes from a citizenry where two-thirds think the mayor has done a good job," West said.
On the other hand, West says, half of the populace think he's dishonest, and 41 percent think he's guilty.
WEDNESDAY MORNING, skies are gray. A strong wind rattles the white tent beside the Providence River. A host of state and city officials and private contractors have come to mark a waterfront restoration project and celebrate the 100th birthday of the state Department of Transportation.
Governor Almond is finishing his remarks when Cianci's limousine arrives. When the mayor's turn comes, he stands on a wooden platform behind the 6-foot-7 governor's tall podium and waxes poetic about the city's transformed waterways and the days when sailing ships from exotic ports docked at India Point. He speaks of a city that was built on risks.
"Good mayors are risk takers," he says. "Well, maybe not all the risks that I've taken."
The remark draws heavy, knowing laughter. Afterward, Cianci poses for a picture with a group of former DOT directors and jokes, "Which one of you guys did I grab the most money from?"
One former DOT director, Dante Boffi, who still works for the state, puts his arm around the mayor and says, "My mother prays for you every day." When Boffi inquired about a city proclamation for his mother, Mary's, 80th birthday a few years ago, the mayor delivered it personally.
"He came to her party and it made her day," said Boffi. "He does a lot of things like that for a lot of people."
Cianci pulls out a lighter and lights the candles on a sheet cake, then joins in a half-hearted chorus of Happy Birthday with the DOT chiefs. As they blow out the candles, he cracks, "I wish your pensions all get bigger."
Afterward, he stands on the grass, smoking a cigarette and chatting with businessman Jim Winoker and Rep. Paul Moura, a staunch supporter.
"I told him that I think he's on top of his game," said Moura, a big Los Angeles Lakers basketball fan. "I was watching an interview last night with Shaquille O'Neal and he was talking about stepping up his performance for the playoffs. That's how the mayor is. He's at everything, everywhere. "
Still, the unspoken questions linger.
"As the trial gets closer, the topic comes up more and more in conversation," said Moura. "People are very curious. 'What's going to happen? Is he going to beat this?' A lot of people aren't sure."
SOME SAY that the burden of Plunder Dome has taken a toll, that Cianci is not always as sharp as he used to be.
"He seems a little worn and ragged around the edges," says Councilman Aponte. "He's not always as crisp as he used to be."
Three Saturdays ago, Cianci walked onstage at the sold-out Providence Performing Arts Center as singer Aretha Franklin was wrapping up Freeway Of Love toward the end of her set.
"Aretha," he called out. "I'm the mayor of Providence, and even I couldn't get a ticket."
Witnesses say that Franklin seemed taken aback, leaning against her piano with her other hand on her hip as Cianci presented her with a key to the city and a jar of his marinara sauce.
Cianci told the widely renowned Queen of Soul that it was great to have "the soul of queen" in Providence, according to four concert-goers, who said that the moment seemed awkward.
"It's always about Buddy," complained one spectator, who was sitting near the front of the theater with his girlfriend. "People around us were very angry."
Another spectator, Michelle Farhadi of Narragansett, who went with her husband, said that people were buzzing about Cianci's performance as they left the theater. She called him "an embarrassment" to the city.
EARLY FRIDAY afternoon, Cianci steps out of his car at the intersection of Branch Avenue and Charles Street, in the North End.
A small knot of men in suits and hard hats stand around tables of coffee and doughnuts, in front of heavy construction equipment. The occasion is a groundbreaking for a new, bigger Brooks drugstore. But to hear Cianci speak, it is much more.
"It's neighborhood, togetherness, family, community," he enthuses.
His parents were married just up the street, at St. Ann's Church, he says. Flanked by four Brooks executives and construction-company officials holding gold shovels, Cianci digs his silver shovel into the freshly turned earth. The men scoop up shovels of dirt, then hold them in midair so the mayor's photographer can take a picture.
Then the photographer says, "Now you can throw the dirt."
Afterward, a Brooks official points to a bulldozer next to an old tenement that will be torn down and asks Cianci, "Do you want to take a chunk out of the building?"
Cianci demurs. He recalls a similar event a few years ago, when he got behind the controls and something went wrong. The next thing he knew, a building being knocked down to make way for the new public safety headquarters burst into flames.
Then the mayor jumps into his car, and continues his rounds.
Earlier in the day, at a press conference in Cianci's office, a reporter asked the mayor about a rumor that he was going to plead guilty that afternoon.
"No," he says. "I don't see that on the schedule."
